Various Notions (Upon Turning 70 Years Old)

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I got a head full of ideas/that are drivin’ me insane

— from Maggie’s Farm by Bob Dylan

Despite battling severe coronary artery disease for more than two decades and incurable high-grade prostate cancer for almost 12 years, I managed to reach the grand age of 70.

Although I haven’t (yet, at least) suffered a heart attack nor developed a remote metastatic tumor, I bear multiple arterial stents, surgical scars and damaged tissues from radiation as souvenirs of life-extending medical care. Thanks to the ongoing treatment that keeps my illnesses at bay, I endure hot flashes, muscular atrophy and cramps, diminished libido and a host of other nasty side effects. Plus the wear-and-tear on my joints, discs and other parts of the musculoskeletal system from some 65 years of hard skiing, among other forms of physical self-abuse, saddles me with chronic pain.

One might not realize the above by looking at me but it’s nonetheless true. (And since I’m unlikely to live past 75, it did occur to me while writing that this is a pre-obituary of sorts.)

My mother Anne, wife Christine, sister Reissa and brother Anthony all predeceased me, so I survive alone in my immediate family with Milton, my 94-year-old father who’s practically blind from macular degeneration, lacks mobility and suffers with advanced dementia. I serve as the sole guardian, legal and otherwise, responsible for his welfare.

But before the violin section starts playing I must say the following:

I’m also privileged enough to have the time and resources to take good care of myself, while also helping others. And over the course of seven decades I have enjoyed a life of such remarkable relationships and experiences that it would be obnoxious to whine any further. The current state of the world, more than any personal struggles, is to blame for my pessimistic mindset.

I’ve traveled to (and within) 65 or so countries, including Brazil, China, India, Japan, Russia and South Africa, not to mention all 50 American states and seven Canadian provinces. In fairly recent years I swam with humpback whales in the South Pacific waters off Moorea; scuba dove on the deep wreck of the SS Thistlegorm in the Gulf of Suez; skied down the slopes of the Andean volcano of Chillan; and trekked to the summit of Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro. I photographed the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Karnak and Luxor in Egypt, and Pompei in Italy, as well as thousands of migrating wildebeests in the Serengeti of Africa and gannets on Bonaventure Island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Someday, perhaps, I’ll visit the Himalayas, Machu Picchu and even Antarctica.

Milton, Gary and Benjamin

One might wonder why I would forego having my own family in favor of globetrotting. Let’s just say that the future of humanity was never something in which I’ve put much faith. (But by adopting my beloved Tibetan Terrier Benjamin not long ago, I admit to a healthy affection for dogs.) It’s enough for me to witness as much of the beauty of this world — the only one I’ll ever know — as possible in this lifetime.

A few years back, for some (likely unknowable) reason, I started formulating and gathering notions on various subjects in my mind. Maybe it’s the psyche’s demand for attention after careers as a business journalist and Wall Street securities analyst, along with nearly two decades of formal education. (I earned university degrees as an undergraduate at McGill in history, then as a graduate student at Stanford in journalism and at NYU in business administration.) And when I began sharing these notions verbally with others, they surprised me by acting less bored and/or annoyed than I would’ve thought. So I decided to commit them to writing on my blog site, expecting to add, subtract and modify over time.

I’m well aware that my opinions tend to make some people uncomfortable. Indeed, I named my now-idle advisory firm Cyrano Equity Research after an iconic character in French drama who fought tyranny, hypocrisy and cowardice with his sharp sword and sharper tongue. In the end, Edmond Rostand’s big-nosed Cyrano de Bergerac falls when one of many enemies drops a heavy object on his head!

Here’s to hoping that I suffer a better fate.

On Senescence

Should you be fortunate to arrive at a great old age in fairly good health you will also live through the loss of almost everybody you loved and cared about. (Note that my siblings, Reissa and Tony, were both heavy cigarette smokers and died at 68 and 58 years of age.)

On Religion

Proud as I am of my Jewish heritage, religion holds no existential appeal to me. But I have always considered myself an agnostic rather than an atheist. As I see it, an atheist believes there is no God whereas an agnostic doesn’t believe there is a God, a subtle distinction that shows appropriate metaphysical humility.

On Science Fiction

A lifelong fan of Star Trek and other speculative tales, I believe that science fiction says more about the time when it was written than about the future it portrays.

On Politics

The white-supremacy aspect of the MAGA movement is overrated relative to its male-supremacy component. Perhaps this explains the inroads, however temporary they may be, the Republican Party has made with Black and Latino men. It almost-certainly explains the disproportionate exit of women compared to men in the Donald Trump Administration.

The critical flaw in democracy is that most people are politically ignorant. Many simply stop believing in it when they’re unhappy with the outcome of elections, just as many believe in free speech until they disagree with what’s being said. In human history, democracy has been an aberration rather than the norm. The seductive power of demagogues must be checked lest autocracy take hold, probably leading to war and other disastrous outcomes. Blaming the Democratic Party and liberal excesses for the popularity of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement is a dangerous waste of time. Who today blames the political opposition in Germany for the rise of Adolf Hitler and the NAZI Party?

On Canada

As an “AmeriCanadian” dual citizen for about 25 years, I’m appalled by President Trump’s abuse of Canada with juvenile insults and punitive tariffs, which should be reserved for America’s enemies. By the same token, I have long failed to see an overall advantage to being Canadian over American. Lower levels of violence and a cheaper, fairer healthcare system (but lacking the world-class medical care that the United States boasts) aside, Canadians are stuck with the comparatively limited opportunities of a moribund economy as well as an undesirable climate. Historically, many more people have moved to the U.S. from Canada than the reverse. Content to reside in an affluent so-called Blue state, I wouldn’t want to live in a Red state but neither would I want to return to Canada, even though it’s a generally decent place where most people in the world would be lucky to gain entry.

English-speakers of Canada and the United States are almost the same, indistinguishable to many folks around the globe. The two nations are the product of the same colonialism that subjugated their indigenous people, but America has been cursed from the outset by the Southern slavery-based socioeconomic system that it inherited from European empires. A century or so ago, Canada’s leaders lacked the imagination to negotiate a union (excluding Quebec) with the Americans. This would have offset the power of the Southern states and, in all likelihood, prevented the election of the likes of Donald Trump as president. We would probably be much better off today. Instead, Canada transitioned from being a British colony to a cultural and economic vassal of the U.S. with no political sway in Washington, D.C. And both countries are in trouble.

During the Civil War in the United States, thousands of future Canadians (for Canada didn’t yet exist as a nation) — Including Calixa Lavallee, who went on to write the national anthem “O Canada” — joined the Union Army. Many enlisted in the knowledge that the conflict’s outcome would matter greatly to all North Americans and perhaps the world. In the same spirit, Canadians today need to figure out how to support the resistance to autocracy in the U.S., instead of resorting to silly anti-Americanisms like boycotting wine from the great Blue state of California. Without American leadership, the free world as we know it is in grave danger from China and its client states of Russia, Iran and North Korea.

The (Melting) Snows of Kilimanjaro

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Dedicated to the memory of my sister Reissa and brother Tony

About a month ago I turned 69 years old. A while back I had decided that in my 70th year I would climb to the top of the highest mountain in Africa: Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro. Around sunrise on October 17, 2025, after an arduous ascent of nearly seven hours in the cold and darkness, I finally reached the summit. During what I consider an eventful life, it was a moment that I will certainly never forget in the time that remains to me.

On the way up to the national park a guide asked me when I had first heard of Uhuru, the peak’s name in Swahili. Like many others of my generation probably would, I cited the celebrated 1936 short story by Ernest Hemingway, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” a tale of mortality (which was later made into a Hollywood film starring Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward and Ava Gardner). Even above 19,000 feet there isn’t much snow and ice left on the dormant volcano, for a host of factors including human-caused climate change, but the views remain spectacular.

The summit: Uhuru Peak at nearly 5,900 meters

I’m not a serious trekker and definitely not a mountain-climber in any technical sense, although I am physically fit for my age and a seasoned high-altitude alpine skier. I was later dismayed to learn that my guide gave me only a 25% chance of summiting Kilimanjaro. An English friend more than a decade my junior texted me beforehand that people he met in Zanzibar said it was the toughest undertaking of their lives. On a four-day journey that took me upwards of 13,000 vertical feet over roughly 22 miles, through multiple climatic zones from rainforest to arctic, I knew with every step how challenging this was. Yet with failure always a possibility, I somehow never doubted that I would soon stand on Uhuru Peak.

I had chosen the often-maligned Marangu Route, the shortest but in some ways hardest because of its limited time to adjust to the mountain’s elevation and the difficulty of the final ascent. To the purists who would prefer to sleep in tents on the longer routes — rather than on bunkbeds in the unheated Marangu huts — I say, “enjoy!” Also, on a trip of just three weeks, I didn’t want to give up precious days on safari in the Serengeti and scuba diving off Zanzibar just to be more miserable.

On the first day we hiked through a monkeyed rainforest from the Marangu Gate to the Mandara Huts, rising some 2,800 feet over five miles in about five hours. On Day Two we climbed more than 3,300 feet over seven miles across moorland, reaching the Horombo Huts in under six hours. On the third day we arrived at the “base camp” of the Kibo Huts at an altitude of higher than 15,000 feet, up more than 3,000 feet over six miles of alpine desert in about four hours (thanks to fairly easy hiking conditions).

Not much snow and ice left on Mount Kilimanjaro

On Day Four, equipped with multiple layers of clothing and other cold-weather attire, daypacks, headlamps and hiking poles, we departed for the summit just before midnight. There was no moonlight to speak of but, fortunately, clear skies full of stars and little wind. It took nearly seven hours to reach Uhuru Peak, on a segment of the route far steeper than the previous ones, involving “switchbacks” (or what a skier would call traverses) and scrambling up rock fields. The Marangu Route saves this brutal 3,900 vertical feet over just four miles for last.

After a brief respite to take pictures of the incomparable vistas and ourselves, we needed to leave. Ironically, the daytime descent proved even tougher for me, as it required side-slipping down long stretches of loose sand and gravel, among other challenges. By the time we arrived at the Kibo Huts my legs were so shot that I engaged a helicopter service to return me to the nearby city of Moshi, an unheroic conclusion to an otherwise worthy achievement.

Anthony “Tony” Scott Vineberg

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September 7, 1967 – September 27, 2025

Where have you gone, my little brother, the golden child I used to rock to sleep at night? My last living sibling has left us. Alone, I struggle to find meaning in this loss. May our 93-year-old father Milton never learn of it.

Nearly 11 years after I was born, he arrived — a so-called accident baby whom we all adored and spoiled. I remember a young Tony telling me that he wouldn’t do anything with his life other than music. And by all accounts he kept his word. I’m skeptical about the great artists he claimed to have accompanied, listed on his website and elsewhere, though that seems par for the course in the music business. (When I met B.B. King backstage once, he rolled his eyes as I mentioned other musicians who took credit in their album liner notes for having played with him.) Still, Tony was a dedicated guitar instructor, highly focused on theory.

If you’ll forgive the cliche, he marched to his own drummer his entire life. Like our late sister Reissa, he was a heavy cigarette smoker, but he rejected most established healthcare in favor of traditional medicine from Asia and other non-Western cultures. (It’s tragically ironic that, according to some of his closest students, Tony had at last given up smoking in a valiant effort to get healthy again.) His views on just about everything from science to politics were pretty fringy (perhaps less so in the age of MAGA), which alienated many of us yet apparently attracted others. As he got older Tony drifted away from most of his relatives, and we from him.

I believe I was the last family member to spend time with him in person. After visiting my late mother-in-law in Corpus Christi, Texas, before she passed away in the fall of 2023, I drove up to Austin to take him out for barbecue lunch. We hugged when I had to leave for the airport in San Antonio. I would neither see nor speak with Tony alive again.

Several years ago he decided to leave his birthplace of Montreal for greener pastures to advance his teaching career. After disappointing forays in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Las Vegas, he seemed to find fertile ground in Austin. (I had also recommended Nashville, Tennessee, to him as having promise for his line of work). In fact, it was one of his students who reported him unreachable when he showed up at Tony’s apartment for a lesson. On Saturday, September 27, with my permission an Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services team entered his apartment and found him deceased on the bathroom floor. He was 58 years old.

According to the Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office, there were no signs of foul play, suicide or drug paraphernalia. In all likelihood he died of a natural cause such as heart attack or stroke, though a more-definitive report on his death is still to come. When I last saw him he didn’t look well to me, overweight and at times breathing laboriously. But he seemed upbeat about his prospects in the Austin area, and I hope he was similarly optimistic in his final moments on this earth.

Has Israel Become a Liability to the Jewish People?

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It’s tough being a centrist Jew like me these days.

I mean those of us who believe in Israel’s right to exist and defend itself but abhor the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing regime — notably the collective punishment of Palestinians for the vile acts of terrorist groups like Hamas. We are being squeezed between extremist Jews on the left and right.

Progressive Jews on college campuses have joined with pro-Palestinian activists who, if not motivated by Jew-hatred per se, are de facto antisemites; many fault Israel’s very existence for the atrocities committed against its citizens. (I happened to be in Amman, Jordan, on October 7, 2023, and was so disgusted by Al Jazeera’s coverage holding Israel rather Hamas responsible that I nearly threw the television set out the hotel-room window.) Yet radical Zionists often side with neo-fascists and populists like Viktor Orban, who routinely exploit antisemitism for political gain; they’ve found common foes in globalization, pluralism and Islam.

I’ve seen Israeli “Kidnapped” hostage posters in my university neighborhood defaced with swastikas. Meanwhile, pro-Israel fanatics have unloaded on me the slander that liberal financier and Holocaust survivor George Soros was actually a Nazi collaborator as a teenager in Hungary.

When I traveled throughout Israel in 1979 it was still an idealistic nation, full of young, hip visitors from Western Europe and North America, many of them not Jewish. The causes of its rightward swerve aren’t simple but I blame it mostly on the decades of war, terrorism and every other conceivable type of hostility from the Arab and Muslim world. Across the political spectrum in Israel today, there seems to be little appetite left for the two-state solution. In my view, there’s no prospect for peace in the Levant and sovereignty for the Palestinians until they reject their most-radical elements and abandon the dream of destroying the Jewish state.

As a secular Jew (who attended Hebrew grade school in Montreal for a few years, and once spoke the language pretty fluently) I grew up with the standard belief that the welfare of our people depended on Israel’s role as a sanctuary; that Israel was an imperfect country for an imperfect world, which had nearly succeeded in eradicating us. But I’ve never been religious nor wanted to depart the West to live there. Now I wonder if Israel’s reckless behavior in Gaza has made it a liability to Jews worldwide, putting Israeli Jews along with those in the Diaspora in greater peril.

I began to sour on Israel when I learned at the end of the ’90s that my late wife’s conversion under a Conservative rabbi did not necessarily pass muster in Jerusalem, where Orthodox Judaism held sway. Since then I’ve noticed an attitude among very nationalist Israelis and their allies abroad that the Diaspora’s main purpose is to elect pro-Israel governments and provide financial support to the Zionist project. (I’ve also sensed a lack of respect when telling them of an ancestor who landed in Normandy with the Canadian forces and helped liberate Western Europe from the Nazis; and of another who risked prosecution by forging scores of documents to bring unwelcome Jewish refugees to Canada. It’s as if only fighting for Israel mattered to them.)

Despite the billions of dollars of direct aid the United States has given Israel under the presidencies of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, they boast that only the Republican Party is good enough, especially with Donald Trump at the helm. For the millions of American Jews who usually vote Democratic because we care about bigotry, climate change, healthcare, gun violence and democracy, this is unacceptable. Betting the house on MAGA also looks short-sighted to me, as younger Americans are less pro-Israel than their elders. When confronted with extremist Zionists here who ignore the harm Trump’s policies are doing to ordinary Americans and Canadians, I don’t hesitate to suggest that they pack up and move to Israel.

Netanyahu’s government and its rightist supporters appear not to mind if his nation is regarded as a pariah in much of the world, nor care if this fuels antisemitism globally. (Hateful assaults on Jewish civilians are never justified but, as unfair as it is, they’ve been a fact of life for centuries and should be denied any possible pretext.) Militarily powerful and backed (for now, at least) by Washington, Israel remains a small country vulnerable to attacks by unmanned aerial weapons from as far away as Yemen. I suspect that life has become highly stressful — indeed, difficult — for many Israelis.

Some readers will no doubt find this post offensive without getting beyond its admittedly provocative title. So be it. But I cannot evade the conclusion that the survival of the Jewish people is now at least as dependent on the Diaspora as on Israel itself, a notion that its current leaders should but probably don’t appreciate well enough.

Make the United States the 11th Province!

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Donald Trump says he’d like to make Canada the 51st state (probably without considering the likelihood that it would tip the political scales toward the Democrats he so loathes). I say make the United States the 11th province, if that’s what it takes to return the Stanley Cup to Canada where it belongs. And Canadians would be able to go back to Florida to see it!

Another (Minor) Milestone

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Almost 19 years ago I bit the bullet and purchased a brand-new Vision Fitness X6200HRT foldable elliptical trainer for the hefty sum of $2,320.92 (including sales tax). Weary of crowded health clubs, I had decided to turn my den into a mini-gym where I could enjoy mindless action shows on my big-screen television while sweating it out during cardio routines. Just the other day I celebrated a milestone, albeit a minor one, when I completed my 1,000th workout on that same Vision Fitness elliptical.

Somewhat analogous to the six decades it took me to log 250 scuba dives, the average of 53 or so sessions annually on my home machine is nothing to brag about. But note that I ended up joining fitness centers (both fancy and basic) again during those years, and often took advantage of the sturdier “professional” equipment available in their facilities. (The Precor ellipticals with adjustable incline, a feature common to treadmills that allows you to work different leg muscles as well as glutes, are perennial favorites of mine. When I’m in town, the Matrix machine that I ride once a week at the nearby Planet Fitness — where I also do resistance training three times a week — is decidedly mediocre.) Since the pandemic, and with the rise of streaming media, I’ve been using my home elliptical more regularly.

For a foldable machine meant for home gyms, the long-discontinued X6200HRT has proved very durable, operating more or less flawlessly from the outset. That’s more than I can say about its predecessor, a bulky Reebok Personal Trek elliptical that failed after 733 sessions in less than five years. It’s interesting (to me, at least) that, as of right now, the cost per use for both comes out almost identically to about $2.30.

My 19-year-old Vision Fitness X6200HRT elliptical trainer

To avoid overheating during workouts, I cool my den with its powerful through-the-wall air conditioner, assisted by a large ceiling fan and three different movable fans. To hear what I’m watching on my 55-inch Sony OLED television I wear JBL over-the-ear wireless headphones connected to an Apple TV streaming box, with the loudspeakers muted. If the entertainment is engaging enough, the cardio session passes very quickly.

Ellipticals have always appealed to me because their motion is low-impact and involves the whole body, upper and lower, unlike stationary bikes and treadmills. During workouts I wear a tried-and-true Polar T34 heart-rate transmitter, which both my Vision Fitness elliptical and the weathered Suunto Vector HR on my left wrist can still read.

My sole routine is with the “HRT Hill” program for a total of 35 minutes: 30 minutes forward followed by a cool-down interval of five minutes (which I do in reverse). I strive to reach or exceed my current theoretical maximum heart rate of 152 — simplistically calculated as 220 minus your age — at the apex of the workout. This formula implies that a person’s peak heart rate should deteriorate by approximately one beat for each year of life. (Note that I don’t pay as much attention to distance and caloric data, as they seem less meaningful or reliable to me.)

Curiously, when I began using this home elliptical in July 2006 at the age of 49, I averaged 150 beats per minute during a typical session. In the latest series I’m averaging 136 b.p.m., an erosion of just 14 over 19 years. In the echocardiogram stress test I underwent last month, my functional capacity was rated “excellent,” as I achieved 169% of the predicted exercise duration for age and gender with a peak heart rate of 154 b.p.m. Even my cardiologist was impressed.

And for that, my trusty Vision Fitness X6200HRT elliptical trainer deserves much credit.

My Underwater LIfe

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Exploring the S.S. Thistlegorm in the Gulf of Suez

My favorite outdoor activity after downhill skiing is in actuality an underwater activity: scuba diving. Recently, I celebrated my 250th logged dive while in the Dominican Republic. It was a pretty tame plunge lasting about 50 minutes, no deeper than 50 feet, on the reefs of Isla Catalina near the southeastern city of La Romana. Nonetheless it was still quite gratifying.

My introduction to scuba diving (almost certainly) dates back to the early 1960s, when I was less than 10 years old. Our family had driven down to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, from Montreal that summer for some beach time. “Uncle” Larry, an eccentric but fun scallywag friend of my dad’s, had brought with him some of the relatively primitive scuba gear of the era and convinced me to give it a try. He then hooked me up and, with scant instruction, I explored the murky shallows near the shore, spotting a pair of feisty crabs and a lost golf ball. It was a magical experience that I would never forget.

Coral-encrusted motorcycle inside the S.S. Thistlegorm

Frankly, 250 dives over the next six decades is not a big deal (though I have made a number of unlogged dives as well). But I wasn’t certified as an Open Water Diver by the Professional Association of Diving Instructors until 1984. (Years later PADI and the industry more or less compelled me to upgrade my certification to Advanced Open Water Diver so I could continue diving on wrecks, among other things; for similar reasons, I qualified to use enriched air, or Nitrox, last May.) However, from the summer of 1989 until the spring of 2002 — almost 13 years — I gave up scuba diving entirely because of an apparent medical misdiagnosis.

On July 8, 1989, after emerging from Palau’s legendary Blue Corner, I began to experience worrisome signs: abdominal pain and numbness in both legs. With a maximum depth of 110 feet and an average depth of roughly 85 feet for 25 minutes before surfacing, then a brief return to 40 feet, I had pushed the PADI Dive Table’s no-decompression limits. (Note that the sophisticated dive computers I’ve used since then were not yet widely available.) Perhaps my excitement at one of the most-spectacular dive sites in the North Pacific and the world — crowded with sizable gray and white-tip reef sharks, and barracuda — got the better of me. I sank to my knees on the beach, whereupon two well-meaning Aussies employed the dubious technique of turning me upside down; this supposedly keeps nitrogen bubbles from rising to the brain.

Spiny critter hiding in the reefs of Vieques, Puerto Rico

By the time our boat was ready to return us to the main island, all of my symptoms had completely resolved. But a retired United States Navy doctor who was advising the local authorities as a consultant insisted that I be treated for either decompression sickness or an air embolism, which entailed nearly five hours in a cramped, antiquated recompression tube. (How I endured the claustrophobia of that treatment without sedation remains a mystery to this day.) And because I was at risk of a serious or even fatal dive accident in the future, he warned, I should give up the sport forever.

A decade passed and I started to get the scuba-diving bug again. So I decided to contact a physician affiliated with the Divers Alert Network here in New York City. Having performed a full medical workup on me, and reviewed my dive logs, he concluded that I was fit to dive — partly based on his determination that I hadn’t suffered from the bends or an air embolism in the first place. For those conditions do not quickly resolve without treatment. He remained my pulmonologist for many years, and I have made almost 200 dives without incident ever since.

Facing Great White Sharks from a cage is not diving

Like alpine skiing, scuba diving is a great excuse to travel the world. In the Americas alone, I have dived in Aruba, the Bahamas, Belize, Bonaire, the Virgin Islands (British and U.S.), the Cayman Islands, the Dominican Republic, the Florida Keys, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Tobago, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. I’ve also dived in Egypt’s northern Red Sea; Indonesia; the Maldives; the Hawaiian islands (Oahu and Kauai); Micronesia; Fiji; the Great Barrier Reef of Australia; and the Society Islands of French Polynesia. Come October I plan to dive in Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania in East Africa.

Among my most-treasured underwater memories are visiting the wrecks of the U.S.S. Liberty near Bali and the S.S. Thistlegorm in the Gulf of Suez. (I have encountered Great White Sharks from within a cage near Gansbaii, South Africa, but that doesn’t count as diving in my book.) When the subject comes up with novice divers I meet, I like to tell them that you don’t have to dive your entire life; but you should dive during your lifetime — to explore the nearly three-quarters of our planet covered by ocean yet unseen by so much of humanity.

On November 5, 2024

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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard — H.L. Mencken

On November 5, 2024 — whether they realize it or not — a plurality of voters in our country chose autocracy and authoritarianism over democracy and the rule of law. The primacy of straight, white, Christian men over equality for women and racial, ethnic, religious and sexual minorities. Demagoguery over character. Bigotry over acceptance of diversity. Trickle-down economics over an equitable sharing of the wealth. Protectionism and isolationism over beneficial trade and the global defense of liberty. Guns over healthcare. Vulgarity and cruelty over dignity and decency. Fossil fuels and deregulation over environmental protection. Corruption over accountability. Conspiracy and crank theories over evidence-based science and expertise. Lies over facts.

The list is almost endless.

Paradoxically, many people who are upset by price inflation also voted for broad tariffs. Some effectively supported and opposed women’s reproductive rights at the same time. A nation populated by immigrants and their descendants voted against immigration. There has already been much post-election analysis and there will be more, rife with undue credit and blame. Pundits who praised one political campaign and criticized another just a few days ago have reversed their positions.

A lot of things could have been done differently in the past few years, but I doubt they would have changed the outcome.

The causes of this political earthquake are both recent and longstanding. The COVID pandemic and surge of migrants across borders into Western countries angered enough citizens to put every incumbent regime in jeopardy, though not all of the major democracies are shifting to the right. And decades of globalization, technological advancement and free-market policies have caused economic disruption and greater inequality. (Ironically, the political forces largely responsible for this have now mutated into a populism that feeds off them.) Many people are also uncomfortable with novel demographic and societal changes, yearning for what they consider the virtues of a more-traditional society. Without a doubt, irresponsible and malign media have played a major role here too.

But, as history shows, electorates often choose poorly, and I fear that ours may soon regret what they have just done. Especially because it cannot be easily undone.

Reissa and Gary

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I believe it was Fran Lebowitz (although I could easily be wrong) who once quipped that, if you happen to be attractive when you’re young, make sure to take lots of pictures as proof, because people won’t believe you when you’re older. Well, maybe I’m biased, but I think my sister Reissa and I were pretty cute kids.

She was born nearly two years before I was, on December 21, 1954, and didn’t give me the best reception when I showed up. In fact, she told me that I wasn’t really her brother, that our parents found me in a trash can, felt pity, and brought me home. But as the picture above shows, we have clear physical similarities. And looking at her hands and feet in the hospital where she spent her penultimate days reassured me that we were indeed brother and sister. In many ways, there was nobody nearer to me.

Reissa and Gary as infants

Reissa Gibbs-Rogers (nee Vineberg) passed away peacefully in Toronto on March 17, 2022, of complications of lung cancer.

As children, we ate together, we played together, we even took baths together. Later on our paths diverged and we led very different lives. We didn’t always get along — but we never lost touch. She took loving care of our mother in Mom’s final years, and looking after Dad (who turns 90 years old in September) brought us closer more recently.

Because I was considerably taller than Reissa, I often thought of her as my little big sister. If either one of us needed a kidney, we knew whom to turn to first; I have no doubt that she would have donated one of hers if I needed it. She was artistic and had a lovely speaking voice. The thought of never hearing it again gives me great sorrow.

And because it’s possible to be sad and angry at the same time, I end with this admonition: If you smoke, please try to quit; if you don’t, please don’t start.

Why I Choose to Be Vaccinated

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Recently, I strolled over to a local chain drugstore to get my seasonal influenza shot. There was little waiting and no out-of-pocket expense, thanks to my comprehensive (albeit costly) medical insurance.  Back in March I received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for COVID-19 exactly three weeks apart, without any side effects to speak of; a third “booster” jab is in the cards for this autumn.

During my lifetime I’ve been inoculated against smallpox, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, typhoid fever, hepatitis A and B, shingles and pneumococcal disease, among others. I’m fairly certain that, so far, I’ve never suffered from smallpox, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, typhoid fever, hepatitis A and B, shingles, pneumococcal disease, or even the flu. Nor have I endured an acute reaction from any of these treatments.

Months before the COVID-19 vaccines were available to me, I began protecting myself by wearing a mask whenever in close proximity to people outside my household; for almost two years I’ve rarely logged a temperature above 98.3 degrees Fahrenheit! Upon returning from Japan in February 2020, I was bewildered by the resistance in North America to the use of cheap, almost weightless masks, which seemed a likely reason why East Asian countries had limited the spread of the novel coronavirus quite well. The opposition to COVID-19 inoculation is a more complex matter altogether.

I’ve never had an acute reaction from a vaccine

Ever since Edward Jenner pioneered immunization against smallpox in the late 18th century, fear has spawned powerful vaccine foes. Long before Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., became the contemporary face of the movement, the National Anti-Vaccination League rose to challenge Britain’s compulsory-vaccination laws.  But the safety and efficacy of medications have improved tremendously over the decades.  Often featuring some ludicrous claims, the central thesis of most “anti-vaxxers” – that the injections are more dangerous than the diseases they’re meant to prevent – has never been less valid.

(It’s a credit to medical science that the last time I inquired, a virologist said the risk of getting infected with smallpox from inoculation was greater than by living unvaccinated because the once-dreaded disease had been virtually eradicated – by vaccines!)

On the other hand, is it illogical for informed people to reject questionable Chinese, Russian or Indian vaccines — or even hold out for an mRNA vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna when only those from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson are offered?  As for me, I would gladly accept the first one available and approved by credible regulatory authorities.  Yet this obviously high comfort level has a rather old backstory that needs telling.

Perhaps my earliest childhood recollection is of a trip to Atlantic City with my sister Reissa, my mother’s young sister Ruth, and my parents.  All I remember of it was watching my mother and father ride off in the motel’s golf cart, presumably to tour the property.  My attempts over the years to reconstruct the trip became a Rashomon-like experience, as all of the participants recalled certain details differently.

However, everybody agreed on why our Atlantic City vacation ended so badly.  It was the late 1950s or early 1960s, and Reissa, Ruthie, Mom and I had all been immunized for polio – but not my father. Dad fell deathly ill, although he was fortunately spared the paralysis often associated with that sickness.  I heard that Uncle Ralph drove down from Montreal to bring the children home while Mom waited as my father recovered well enough to return.

When asked why my dad alone was unvaccinated, my late mother always gave me the unsatisfactory answer that he was too busy with work.  Since then, he has confessed to believing that he really didn’t need it.  “I thought I was a big shot, and it almost killed me,” he stated, having learned the proverbial hard way.   And so earlier this year, at the age of 88, he rolled up his sleeve twice for Pfizer-BioNTech jabs without hesitation.